Suicides increasing

CHRIS OLWELL | The News Herald

Saturday

Jul 13, 2013 at 12:01 AMJul 13, 2013 at 6:55 PM

PANAMA CITY — On Sept. 13, 2007, 17-year-old Alex Abrahams cut class, which led to an argument with his mom. She went to the store for 10 minutes; when she returned home, her only son had shot himself to death.

PANAMA CITY — On Sept. 13, 2007, 17-year-old Alex Abrahams cut class, which led to an argument with his mom. She went to the store for 10 minutes; when she returned home, her only son had shot himself to death.

The next year was a blur for Karen Abrahams, Alex’s mother. She quit her job and spent her days curled up in Alex’s bed until her husband got home from work. She would be making dinner; he had no idea what she did all day.

Neither Karen Abrahams nor her husband Rob blamed the other, but they both blamed themselves. Beyond that they just tried to survive: Remember to eat; remember to bathe; remember to breathe. He sat over there, and she sat over here. That year they occupied the same space, but that was about it.

“I didn’t ask him how he was doing because I knew how he was doing, because I knew how I was doing,” Karen Abrahams said.

She planned a wedding, and she went to it and she put her daughter’s veil on her head before her husband walked her down the aisle. She knows those things happened mostly because she has pictures, not necessarily because she remembers doing them.

Data show local suicide rates are among the highest in the state. According to data from the 14th Judicial Circuit Medical Examiner’s Office, suicides have increased steadily since the mid-1990s and more dramatically in recent years.

There have been 50 or more suicides every year since 2007 with the exception of 2010, when there were 45. Three years have more than 60 suicides. Between 1997 and 2007 there were never more than 47 in a year.

In Bay, Calhoun, Gulf, Holmes, Jackson and Washington counties in 2011, fewer people were killed in car crashes (53) than died by their own hand (64). The rate of per capita suicide deaths here was second highest in the state in 2011, as it was in 2009.

Demographics

Though all races and ethnicities are at risk of suicide, those who committed suicide here since 1997 were overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly men. The majority of them shot themselves to death. At least 459 people in that period, like Alex Abrahams, shot themselves.

For every completed suicide, the Bay County Sheriff’s Office responds to dozens of suicide threats, said Maj. Tommy Ford.

One of the best tools law enforcement has to respond to suicidal people is the Baker Act, which allows police to commit someone to a mental health facility if they are considered a danger to themselves or others. The Baker Act also allows law enforcement to take firearms away from suicidal people.

Still, there are limits to what police can do under the Baker Act. A person held under the Baker Act must be released within 72 hours in most cases. If a person committed under the Baker Act is released and they want their guns back, the police have to oblige.

Risk factors

The biggest risk factor for suicide is previous suicidal behaviors or attempts, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, but experts say suicide is a result of treatable symptoms.

“It’s like a heart attack,” said Dr. Brian Braumiller, a psychiatrist at Life Management Center, one of the local mental health treatment facilities where police take suicidal people. “Most of the time you have a heart attack you’ve got high cholesterol, you have high blood-pressure, you’re obese, and then you have your heart attack. So, if you correct the cholesterol and you correct the high blood-pressure and the obesity, the chance of you having a heart attack are probably a lot less.”

People at risk for suicide often have mental illness, depression and anxiety being the most common. There also is a tendency for substance abuse, which can both enhance depression and contribute to poor judgment, Braumiller said.

Physical ailments can lead to anxiety, depression and substance abuse, too, so someone with untreated health problems can become someone at risk for suicide.

Add a stressful life event — a breakup or a job loss — and people at risk for suicide begin to focus on problems and imagine how one problem will lead to the next and the next; they begin to obsess and lose track of the good things that make life worth living, Braumiller said.

“It’s just that kind of change,” he said. “The more stress that can be put on somebody the more critically you’ve got to watch them.”

These can be treated with a combination of medication and cognitive therapy, Braumiller said. Psychiatrists like Braumiller will medicate patients to correct chemical imbalances in the brain associated with depression.

“A lot of times it’s restructuring how they think about something,” he said.

Effect on others

Suicide impacts more than just the lives of the suicidal, Life Management community relations specialist Tricia Pearce said. The people who have lost a loved one to suicide have great difficulty adjusting after the loss, she said. They’re wracked with guilt for missing the warning signs that seem so obvious in retrospect.

Karen and Rob Abrahams know all about that.

“Part of her adjusting to it and learning to deal with it has been to ... to try and get the word out about the signs of suicide and help prevent suicide,” Pearce said.

On the one-year anniversary of their son’s death, Karen and Rob Abrahams gathered at his grave with some of Alex’s friends. They told stories about the kid who loved Lynyrd Skynyrd and fishing and skimboarding.

“I think for the first time I laughed instead of crying, because the kids were telling me stories about my son that I hadn’t heard before,” Karen said.

SPARE

Alex was a pretty typical teenaged boy, Karen said. He had a girlfriend when he died. He got a speeding ticket showing off for her. He worked at Taco Bell. He experimented with pot and booze.

Once Karen found out Alex and a friend had gotten drunk on tequila mixed with, of all things, sweet tea. She took a certain delight in torturing them when they woke up hung over; she offered them both a glass of sweet tea and watched them turn green as they scrambled for the toilet.

It’s better to remember who he was than how he died, Alex’s parents decided. They still had a million whys and what-ifs they’d never be able to answer, and those will always be there, Rob Abrahams said, but things slowly got better.

“It was time to pick up our lives and actually start living it,” Karen Abrahams said.

She helped to start the Suicide Prevention Awareness Response and Education Coalition, or SPARE, a group dedicated to educating people about suicide and supporting people who have lost someone. SPARE holds a candlelight vigil at the Peace Pond at Life Management in November and a fundraising walk across the Hathaway Bridge.

“Everybody deals with it in their own way, but knowing that you can still reach out to someone if you need that support at that time is important,” said SPARE co-chairwoman Christine Hurst.

In that first year, two other young people Karen Abrahams knew took their own lives.

In 2009, Karen decided she would tell the story to anyone who asked. She talks about suicide with other people who have lost loved ones and going through the same things she did. She hopes it helps them because it doesn’t help her.

“It hurts me, just like talking now is upsetting me, but if I don’t talk about it, who will?” Karen said. “Nobody wants to talk about suicide. Nobody.”

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